Raptor

[fred]

Fred, let me give an example:

 

Example A: You are a promising young player with a  flair for reading your opponents. You have some major weaknesses, such as not really being able to work out the better declarer line when line A was 60% and line B was only 50%. You have trouble with double dummy problems, and don't seem to get much better even with practice, but at the table you usually find the winning line even if against the odds.

 

Is this player better off:

1. trying to get his technical card playing up to snuff?

or

2. trying to further improve his already good card sense?

 

Which gives the more bang for the buck? Can this person become world class without improving 1?

 

Example B: You have a computer for a memory and so does your bridge partner. You have been playing some ART methods and when they come up, you find that you often generate slam swings. You have some new ideas that you have been thinking about that should help your bidding on 5% of the hands without losing anything the rest of the time, but have yet to work out the details. Your card play is strong but could get better with more practice. Sadly, you wouldn't notice that an opponent hitched if they jumped on the table.

 

Again, how should this player spend his time to improve? And can this person ever become world class without any table sense?

 

 

My main question is:

1. Is it always correct to attempt to improve your weaknesses, or might you be better off further enhancing your strengths?

2. Do the two optimization problems lead to different allocations of your time:

a. become as good as you can in 5 years?

b. win a world championship in 5 years?

3. Is improving one's 'bidding system skill' in a different catagory from these other skills? (You seem to think so)

 

Note: I think there are two different skills at play with bidding systems (as with languages):

a. vocabulary - you have a good memory and can remember the meanings of all sort of sequences and know what to do with various hand types and have developed some novel meanings for some bids/sequences that has gotten you improved results.

b. grammar - you understand the internal logic of how systems are put together. You can work out what a bid should logically mean even if you don't remember the sequence or have never discussed it. If someone gives you a brand new set of methods, you can read them and play them easily, as long as they make sense.

 

Note that skill 'a' is non-transferable, when playing in a new partnership it does not give you any instant advantage, while skill 'b' is transferable and I think much more valuable.

 

Anyway, Fred thanks for your thoughts! Its always valuable to get feedback from great players on how to improve. I really appreciate your taking the time to do that.

 

Josh

Not all great players are great at all important aspects of the game. However, all must achieve at least some minimum standard of proficiency in all important aspects of the game in order to have a realistic chance to win a major tournament.

 

The necessary standard of proficiency for what you call "bidding vocabulary" is very low in my opinion (at least compared to the level of vocabulary that many talented but unsuccessful players seem intent on achieving).

 

Being good at "bidding grammar" is important. Having good bidding judgment is important. Have good partnership skills as they relate to bidding (among other things) is important. Having an extensive bidding vocabulary is not important.

 

My opinion is that, until a player masters the other aspects of bridge, it is a waste of time his/her time to work on increasing his/her vocabulary. The more time you spend on this, the more time you are wasting.

 

Keep in mind that I am assuming that the basic goal is to be successful. If your goals are to develop or learn interesting new methods then obviously it is not a waste of time to try to develop or learn interesting new methods.

 

However, I think you will find that you won't be very good at this. For example, relay methods are not worth much unless you are already an excellent declarer, have outstanding concentration, and have developed a good sense of when the opponents are likely to lead certain things, make lead directing doubles... It is also hard for players who lack excellent bridge skills to evaluate conventions like Raptor 1NT overcalls in terms of "big picture issues" (like to what degree they will hurt your takeout double auctions).

 

There are things that you can do to intentionally improve certain aspects of your game. For example, if you want to improve your declarer play there are plenty of good books and software tools like Bridge Master.

 

However, there are other aspects of bridge that you can only improve by playing a lot with and against the strongest opposition you can find, thinking about the hands, and discussing the important issues with players who are more experienced than you are (and listening to what they tell you!). In order for you to get the most out of this, it will help if your mind is not cluttered with information that is not important so that you can devote your full attention to the parts of the game that really matter.

 

I don't think you have to consiously decide things like "I think my table presence needs work so I will devote the next 6 months to that". Just play a lot and think about the hands you play. If you have the right attitude and at least a little bit of talent, you will succeed (though it may take 5 or 10 years before you are ready for prime time).

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[Elianna]

Playing bridge has many aspects, and involves many skills:

a. technical skills playing the cards

b. psychology/ card reading/ logic

c. good visualization/judgement in the bidding

d. memory for what cards have been played

e. having bidding and carding agreements (AND remembering them) that solve problems for your side AND/OR give opponents problems [Essentially this falls under "do your homework"]

f. mental toughness and endurance

You have left out one very important skill:

 

g. Being a good partner.

 

There are many threads discussing what makes a good partner. Some of it is which combination of the above set of skills one holds, but a lot of being a good partner is being able to sense what the person across the table from you is thinking, and being able to react to that.

 

And no, I don't mean in play or bidding, but in between hands. For example, if your partner tells you to stop carping on some point, being ABLE to stop, without turning the very fact of stopping against them, too.

 

Just knowing how to treat partners is a very good skill. At one club I direct, there is usually a gentleman who comes in without a partner, and whenever I call people to try to find him one, they say that they'll play, but not with him. And not because he's such a poor player (goodness knows, there are MUCH worse players that I can find partners for), it's because that guy can not shut his mouth!

[kenrexford]

You are right, Fred. This eventually comes to pass. My experience has been this way. However, it takes a complete shutdown of your thinking.

 

I personally have had many fine players, national champions, ask to partner up after it was realized that I was not the insane mad scientist. However, the flair for the exotic and esoteric brought havoc upon me a few years back. The solution was to abandon the nonsense.

 

A side problem from the bizarre tools is that few know your true ability for a while. They expect that you had success because the dumb opposition could not handle the nonsense. You have not been "tested" as to true ability.

 

I mentioned this problem for the aspiring bridge player. I mentored some young kids years ago, for a short while, and encouraged them in some bad habits. All had great potential, and one ignored me and others like me to become a great player. The others seemed to have burned out. That's a shame.

[joshs]

Playing bridge has many aspects, and involves many skills:

a. technical skills playing the cards

b. psychology/ card reading/ logic

c. good visualization/judgement in the bidding

d. memory for what cards have been played

e. having bidding and carding agreements (AND remembering them) that solve problems for your side AND/OR give opponents problems [Essentially this falls under "do your homework"]

f. mental toughness and endurance

You have left out one very important skill:

 

g. Being a good partner.

 

There are many threads discussing what makes a good partner. Some of it is which combination of the above set of skills one holds, but a lot of being a good partner is being able to sense what the person across the table from you is thinking, and being able to react to that.

 

And no, I don't mean in play or bidding, but in between hands. For example, if your partner tells you to stop carping on some point, being ABLE to stop, without turning the very fact of stopping against them, too.

 

Just knowing how to treat partners is a very good skill. At one club I direct, there is usually a gentleman who comes in without a partner, and whenever I call people to try to find him one, they say that they'll play, but not with him. And not because he's such a poor player (goodness knows, there are MUCH worse players that I can find partners for), it's because that guy can not shut his mouth!

yes. g is a critical skill. Getting partner to play his best, requires certain behavior and a certain temperment.

 

Josh

[luke warm]

i just can't see how the one skill (i'm lumping play skills together) excludes the other (bidding, whether relays or standard)...

 

i've found that when i've had regular partners, playing the same system all the time (usually some strong club system), my play skills are at a higher level... i don't know exactly why this is... comfort maybe?

 

so imo pick a system that suits you from a tempermental standpoint, practice it until both the normal bids and inferences from what wasn't bid become 2nd nature, and play it with one or two regular partners...

 

it seems to me that play skill can improve just as much from within the framework of a system suited to you (regardless of the time it takes to learn its intricacies) as from a less artificial system (or vice versa).. iow, one can improve weaknesses in declarer play, defense, etc when playing (and learning) ultimate club just as easily as when playing 2/1... but that's just my opinion, and it doesn't speak to the soundness of any specific system or convention... that's a job for the theoreticians

[Gerben42]

Anyway, a nice thread emerged from "what's the point count for a raptor NT?"

 

As a closing note on the "importance of system" issue: The fact that no one plays system X at the top level means nothing. Only if people have played it at the top level and stopped playing it, that means something. No one before has tried a Fantunes-like system before. They did, and they are successful. I bet that if a pair with the talent of these two would have started out with something completely different, say Magic Diamond (a strong ♦ system), the result would be the same.

 

Also you can have the nicest system in the world, it all comes down to judgement in the end. Am I going to bid game or not? Am I going to take a save?

[fred]

As a closing note on the "importance of system" issue: The fact that no one plays system X at the top level means nothing.

I disagree with this.

 

Some players understand bridge well enough to look at some systems and conventions and decide that they are theoretically and/or tactically unsound. Sometimes they will be wrong and course it would mean more if such players actually tried these systems before dismissing them.

 

However, in my opinion it does mean something if the world's leading players are not even willing to give a particular system or convention a try. Chances are good that such systems or conventions are not worth trying.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[Gerben42]

Sorry I guess that was a bit undifferentiated, some things are of course silly (one can think of a 2NT opening showing 10 - 12 balanced for example - no one would even try that).

 

What I meant to say is that it might mean less than many think. Anyway, playing Raptor NT or natural 1NT overcalls won't make you or break you. Being able to make less mistakes than the opponents will.

 

On a side note, I think we will see more of these "extremely natural" Fantunes-type systems around in the near future.

 

P.S. I know that there are downsides to Raptor 1NT, especially when you hold the 15 - 18 balanced with stopper hand type. However it has much more upside than conventions that I would characterize as horrible.

[awm]

While I agree that "just because it's not played by top pairs means it's a bad convention" is jumping to a conclusion, it's worth being wary of conventions that were played by top pairs at one time, or are commonly played among lower-level players but which are not currently played at top-flight competition. This usually means that the good players gave these conventions a look (or maybe a test-run) and decided they were somehow bad.

 

Wasn't raptor very popular among top polish players some years ago? Do they still play it? If not, it would definitely be worth asking them why. Of course, there are occasionally examples like the Wilkosz 2♦ which they stopped playing in part because of legislators, but raptor would seem not to fall into this category.

 

This kind of reasoning has less application to something like Fantoni-Nunes system, which to some degree has "never been seen before" (although it does combine many principles from EHAA, Kaplan-Sheinwold, and Roth-Stone, the latter two of which had great success in top-flight competition in times past).

[42]

Wasn't raptor very popular among top polish players some years ago? Do they still play it?

I think Raptor was part of WJ2000, I know for sure that it is not anymore in WJ2005.

[Gerben42]

I think Raptor was part of WJ2000, I know for sure that it is not anymore in WJ2005.

 

Right. In the poll shown at the end ofhere you can see that this was point 38. The natural 1NT overcall won by 58% to 42% in the votes. I guess that's why the Polish NT was taken out of WJ2005. Such a result is not surprising since natural meanings will always score well in such polls unless the gain of the non-natural meaning is compelling.

 

I guess this has always been a close vote and if people really would not like it I'd expect it to be less close by means of "are you still playing that?"

 

Anyway personally I like it that way and even if I might lose some points on this as Fred suggests I am sure I lose much more in other areas so I will work on that instead.

[hrothgar]

Fred advanced the argument that the failure of any top pairs to play a Raptor style 1NT opening suggests that this method may be flawed:

 

I was just skimming through a number of my World Championship books. I noted something rather interesting.

 

The French Bermuda Bowl teams often employ very similar methods (5 card majors with, with a strong artificial and forcing 2♣ and 2♦ opening). While this strong 2♦ opening is in widespread use in France, its rarely seen used by top pairs outside this country. The methods haven't spread far despite some great success on the part of the French team...

 

In a similar fashion, the Polish teams almost always play some version of Polish Club (once again, with great success). With the exception of the occasional emigree pair, I almost never saw these methods used by any top North American pair. (Molson - Baran is the only exception that somes to mind).

 

I can point to a number of other examples where individual methods are extremely popular within a given a geographic region, but have failed to diffuse very far...

 

While I agree with your assertion that bridge players are constantly looking for an edge, I also believe that this is counter-balanced by a herd instinct. The top pairs within any given region normally prefer to go with the field, relying on superior declarer play and defense to produce a good card. Its far from clear that weaker pairs should indulge them by playing "their" game.

 

Kit Woolsey has written some very good books on bridge. From my perspective, one of the most interesting suggestions that he made involved optimal strategy playing against a superior team. Woolsey noted that the optimal strategy for winning the match might involve taking (slightly) inferior lines. For example, holding an eight card fit missing the queen, you might prefer to play for the drop rather than a finesse. The odds of playing for the drop aren't that much worse. And, if you get lucky, this might be enough to compensate for all those overtricks that the "good" team is picking up...

 

Curious what you think of Woolsey's line of reasoning (The link between this and Raptor is pretty obvious...)

[Finch]

It seems to me that Hrothgar and Fred are not saying dramatically different things.

 

Suppose (amazingly) that you are not as good as your opponents/not the best pair in the field.

 

Hrothgar: if you want to win _now_ you should play a high variance/anti-field system

Fred: if you want to win consistently long term you should improve your standard of bridge, and a playing around with a high variance/anti-field system is not the way to do that.

 

Both of those seem true to me.

 

I'm in the 'Fred' camp for one main reason:

 

You don't have to play anti-field methods to play a high variance or anti-field game. Just look at the way Meckwell play when 60+ imps down before the last segment without changing their system. You can mix up the results by going ultra-conservative or ultra-aggressive (depending on your natural tendencies) as well as psyching sometimes, or putting in the odd 'distortion' (canape opening bids, off-centre 1NT openings, stretched pre-empts with a 4-card major).

 

What's more, if you take that approach then you can also play a straight-down-the-middle sound game when you are the better pair or team without being 'handicapped' by strange methods, or without changing your methods.

 

One thing I found in Tenerife (EBL pairs) is that there ain't no such thing as "playing with the field" when the field is sufficiently diverse.

 

Playing to preserve a big lead and playing to make up a big deficit are two aspects of the game that aren't given a huge amount of attention. We've had team discussions on what to do at aggregate scoring when big leads and deficits are quite common; rather less so at imp scoring.

[Sigi_BC84]

Fred advanced the argument that the failure of any top pairs to play a Raptor style 1NT opening suggests that this method may be flawed:

I've just read in a different topic that double dummy analysis is indeed very close to the real world performance (RL declarers take 0.1 tricks more on average than DD declarers).

 

So why not do a double dummy analysis of Raptor versus natural notrump? At first thought this looks pretty realistic to me, or does anybody see a reason why it might not work (not every convention can be DD analysed in a meaningful way).

 

--Sigi

[Finch]

The DD analysis referred to was of the play only, not the auction.

 

To do a DD analysis of Raptor, you would need to define your entire competitive bidding methods to the DD program, because you have to include all the auctions you compete due to the negative inferences from playing/not playing raptor. Then you have to teach the DD program to bid properly against raptor.

 

No-one has yet taught a machine to bid that well.

[Sigi_BC84]

You don't have to play anti-field methods to play a high variance or anti-field game.[...]

 

What's more, if you take that approach then you can also play a straight-down-the-middle sound game when you are the better pair or team without being 'handicapped' by strange methods, or without changing your methods.

 

One thing I found in Tenerife (EBL pairs) is that there ain't no such thing as "playing with the field" when the field is sufficiently diverse.

OK, so what is actually the case in your opinion? If there is no playing with the field because the field is diverse enough, then, by definition, there are no field-methods and hence no anti-field-methods as well.

 

Also you're talking about being "handicapped by strange methods" as if it can be assumed that the methods are as strange to the pair who is applying them as to anybody else. I don't think this would be the case at all (probably the pair playing the methods will know them well enough, or no?).

 

If the methods are a handicap, that makes them bad methods by any means. Just being "strange" in the eyes of the majority doesn't impose a handicap in a general sense (except maybe for badly prepared opposition).

 

Following the discussion I get a stronger and stronger impression that this is more about beliefs, preferences and feelings than about actual performance of this-or-that method (this doesn't have to apply to Raptor, but see my posting about double dummy analysis above).

 

While top-experts won't be prone to use inferior methods, this does not mean that most unknown or rarely-used methods are inferior. Richard makes a strong point when he says that geographical location and local regulations play a big role here. So why not use tried-and-true methods if you can be reasonably sure that you will outplay most of the opposition after the contract has been declared? Those methods will be the ones predominant in your country/area, that's why american top pairs do not play Polish Club and almost all Poles do.

 

Now take a method like Keri, which many people here are raving about. So far I haven't met a pair in real life who are playing Keri. Same applies to Scanian NT and Heeman -- they all play Staymanic systems, which are proven to be less effective than the abovementioned methods. So just because a method is unknown and the field prefers something else doesn't mean it's necessarily better.

 

Something else is nagging me as well: the possibilities for bidding systems are endless, but only a tiny proportion of these is actually in use (most of them being natural even, now why should this be optimal after all?). This is not a constructive argument but hints strongly towards the fact that there must be countless methods out there which are better than the "Standard(s)" (and still playable). OK, some of these are outlawed, but that opens an entirely new can of worms.

 

This will conclude my ramblings, maybe somebody here has a comment on this or that...

 

--Sigi

[Sigi_BC84]

The DD analysis referred to was of the play only, not the auction.

 

To do a DD analysis of Raptor, you would need to define your entire competitive bidding methods to the DD program, because you have to include all the auctions you compete due to the negative inferences from playing/not playing raptor.  Then you have to teach the DD program to bid properly against raptor.

 

No-one has yet taught a machine to bid that well.

Of course you can only DD analyze deals (with a given contract), and not auctions.

 

What I'm having in mind is to construct typical deals where Raptor and natural notrump overcalls would apply, and see which one loses or gains more and if it will average out in the end.

 

This will require some work in specifying the hands but it should be possible. There are tools which allow you to generate deals based on complex specifications (probably you know this but I'm mentioning it anyway just in case).

 

Alternately one could analyze hands from real world play, looking for cases where Raptor and natural notrump had been used and see which one loses out. I don't have access to BridgeBrowser but maybe somebody will bother to actually do it. Filtering out the Raptor hands shouldn't be too hard...

 

--Sigi

[Finch]

The point I was making on the DD analysis thing is that it's not enough to take hands where you would have a Raptor 1NT overcall or a natural 1NT overcall. You have to take pretty much _all_ competitive auctions, because of the inferences available from the lack of use. I've never played Raptor, nor against it, so I'm not certain what these are, but I bet there are loads of them.

 

Then the opening side will (might) have a different defence to a Raptor 1NT overcall than a natural 1NT overcall, and might end in a different contract. Particularly relevant to DD analysis, if the opening side declarer the hand they will have different information about the opposition layouts: a natural 1NT overcall gives a blueprint to the declarer play that DD analysis won't give Raptor the benefit of (and vice versa but in different final contracts and possibly to a different overall extent).

 

I agree it could be done, but I think it's a seriously large amount of effort.

[Finch]

One thing I found in Tenerife (EBL pairs) is that there ain't no such thing as "playing with the field" when the field is sufficiently diverse.

OK, so what is actually the case in your opinion? If there is no playing with the field because the field is diverse enough, then, by definition, there are no field-methods and hence no anti-field-methods as well.

Yes, that was a completely random rambling side issue comment. Sorry. I was just staggered at the time how very, very few flat or flattish boards there were.

 

Also you're talking about being "handicapped by strange methods" as if it can be assumed that the methods are as strange to the pair who is applying them as to anybody else.  I don't think this would be the case at all (probably the pair playing the methods will know them well enough, or no?).

 

If the methods are a handicap, that makes them bad methods by any means.  Just being "strange" in the eyes of the majority doesn't impose a handicap in a general sense (except maybe for badly prepared opposition).

 

I wasn't talking about Raptor in particular. I was addressing Hrothgar's suggestion (which now I can't find, am I in the wrong thread?) that _even_ if a method is (marginally) inferior, the best way to win is to do something different from the herd and so unusual methods are worth playing.

[DrTodd13]

Sorry I guess that was a bit undifferentiated, some things are of course silly (one can think of a 2NT opening showing 10 - 12 balanced for example - no one would even try that).

 

What I meant to say is that it might mean less than many think. Anyway, playing Raptor NT or natural 1NT overcalls won't make you or break you. Being able to make less mistakes than the opponents will.

 

On a side note, I think we will see more of these "extremely natural" Fantunes-type systems around in the near future.

 

P.S. I know that there are downsides to Raptor 1NT, especially when you hold the 15 - 18 balanced with stopper hand type. However it has much more upside than conventions that I would characterize as horrible.

I ran into a pair playing a 7-8 pt balanced 2N in a tournament. Of course, they were only doing it because people were unprepared to defend against it. If this tactic got popular then defenses would be created and this ridiculous bid would be punished.

[Myon]

Raptor does have big effects in competitive bidding. Firstly, you probably have to alert any 1any-2m overcall because that effectively rules out a 4M holding (unless overcaller is very strong), and secondly, you pass with the 15(16)-17bad balanced hand where you would normally have overcalled 1NT (with 17good-18 you'd double and rebid NT), and jump out of the dark later when Pd reopens (we had "weird" biddings like 1any-p-p-X-p-3NT).

 

Having said that, I know that this won't stop Sigi from implementing a dealer file for it :)

[han]

The point I was making on the DD analysis thing is that it's not enough to take hands where you would have a Raptor 1NT overcall or a natural 1NT overcall. You have to take pretty much _all_ competitive auctions, because of the inferences available from the lack of use. I've never played Raptor, nor against it, so I'm not certain what these are, but I bet there are loads of them.

 

Then the opening side will (might) have a different defence to a Raptor 1NT overcall than a natural 1NT overcall, and might end in a different contract. Particularly relevant to DD analysis, if the opening side declarer the hand they will have different information about the opposition layouts: a natural 1NT overcall gives a blueprint to the declarer play that DD analysis won't give Raptor the benefit of (and vice versa but in different final contracts and possibly to a different overall extent).

 

I agree it could be done, but I think it's a seriously large amount of effort.

No, I think that you were right the first time, it can't be done.

 

Sure, you can run computer simulations that might say something interesting about the convention, but they will never be as decisive as a double dummy analysis of a play contract.

[Chamaco]

Raptor does have big effects in competitive bidding. Firstly, you probably have to alert any 1any-2m overcall because that effectively rules out a 4M holding (unless overcaller is very strong), and secondly, you pass with the 15(16)-17bad balanced hand where you would normally have overcalled 1NT (with 17good-18 you'd double and rebid NT), and jump out of the dark later when Pd reopens (we had "weird" biddings like 1any-p-p-X-p-3NT)

This is a matter of style, I guess.

While I won't argue with the style you describe, I prefer to stick to the following:

 

15 balanced = frequent offshape t/o double (unless too much wasted), passing any minimum response

 

16-17= double then 1NT

 

18-20 = double then 2NT (regardless of whether it's a jump)

 

 

I won't claim it never backfires, but not a disaster either, especially at MP.

 

At IMPS Team, I confess that sometimes I miss the natural 1NT. :)

[fred]

The point I was making on the DD analysis thing is that it's not enough to take hands where you would have a Raptor 1NT overcall or a natural 1NT overcall. You have to take pretty much _all_ competitive auctions, because of the inferences available from the lack of use. I've never played Raptor, nor against it, so I'm not certain what these are, but I bet there are loads of them.

 

Then the opening side will (might) have a different defence to a Raptor 1NT overcall than a natural 1NT overcall, and might end in a different contract. Particularly relevant to DD analysis, if the opening side declarer the hand they will have different information about the opposition layouts: a natural 1NT overcall gives a blueprint to the declarer play that DD analysis won't give Raptor the benefit of (and vice versa but in different final contracts and possibly to a different overall extent).

 

I agree it could be done, but I think it's a seriously large amount of effort.

Frances is right - the "raptor vs. 1NT" issue is FAR too complex to expect much help from present day software. In principle I believe that a program to answer questions like this could be created. However, I do not expect to see this happen unless either a team of super-smart people works on this for a several years or unless there is some kind of fundamental breakthrough in AI research.

 

If I was setting the line I would make the over-under number something like 20 years.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[Guest Jlall]

15 balanced = frequent offshape t/o double (unless too much wasted), passing any minimum response

 

16-17= double then 1NT

X then 1N is usually not even possible (and is impossible if they open 1S). That is the problem with this scheme.